Big Sur Half Marathon: Women's winner cruises

Moments after crossing the finish line, Sarah Kiptoo found her Kenyan teammates and joined in the celebration.

The 24-year-old made it a clean sweep for AmeriKenyan Running Club at Sunday's 11th annual Big Sur Half Marathon on Monterey Bay, easily winning the women's overall title with a time of one hour, 11 minutes and 21 seconds.

Following her win, Kiptoo shared embraces with men's winner Jacob Chemtai and runner-up Nelson Oyugi, also part of AmeriKenyan Running Club. The trio lives and trains together at the club's base in Santa Fe, N.M.

"We're very happy today," said Kiptoo, who won this year's Grandma's Marathon in Minnesota with a record time of 2:26:31. "We are going to celebrate with a big meal."

Kiptoo made it a one-woman race, blazing from the start. She ran her first two miles at a blistering 5:05 pace.

Her usual modus operandi, as explained by AmeriKenyan Running Club manager Scott Robinson, is to go with the men in order to "open her lungs" before backing off a bit.

"When I need to do my best I always run fast at the start to get a pace," said Kiptoo, who earned $3,000 with the victory. "I felt very good today."

Winner of the EQT 10-miler (53:50) in Pittsburgh two weeks ago, Kiptoo ran alone throughout the race. The company she'd keep turned out to be the surroundings.

"This is such a beautiful place," said Kiptoo, who, like Chemtai, was making her Big Sur Half Marathon debut. "The ocean is so pretty."

At AmeriKenyan's home base in Santa Fe, Kiptoo and Co. run at elevations as high as 7,000 feet. The terrain also features many more hills. Running at sea level on what was basically a flat course was as she simply put it, "comfortable."

"We're coming from a high altitude so it's much easier to breathe here," Kiptoo said. "I didn't have any problems at all and feel good."

In completing their dominant morning, it was AmeriKenyan Running Club teammate Everlyne Logat who placed second, finishing the 13.1-mile course with a time of 1:13:49. Logat would slip by third place finisher Jess Draskau-Petersson by a 1,000th of a second. Draskau-Petersson ran in the 2012 Olympics marathon for Denmark.

From the start, Logat sensed that Kiptoo would be hard to catch.

"She took off and I knew I wasn't in the same shape Sarah was in, so I didn't even try to go with her," Logat said. "I just ran my own race. I'm very happy for Sarah."

Like Kiptoo, Logat also looked like she could've kept running to Seaside.

"The low elevation really helps with breathing," Logat said. "I didn't feel at all like I was struggling. It definitely makes a difference."

Rounding out the women's race was fourth place finisher Lindsay Flanagan of Seattle (1:13:56) and fifth place finisher Sarah Crouch of South Lake Tahoe (1:16:11).

Locally, the top female finisher was Pacific Grove's Heather McWhirter, who came in at 1:22:57.

Of the nearly 9,000 overall runners, 65 percent weres female. The women's course record is 1:09:43, set by Belainesh Gebre in 2010.